Minecraft Adventure Maps

Search for buried treasure. Explore mazes full of monsters. Sail the high seas and escape from booby-trapped temples. At first, these kinds of expeditions may not sound like Minecraft—except for, possibly, the mazes full of monsters.

Player-designed adventure maps for Minecraft are run through the Adventure Craft mod, and they add a whole new dimension of exploration, hidden objectives, and role-playing to the otherwise simple creative game. Minecraft adventure maps offer mission objectives to Minecraft players for whom the creative potential of the sandbox game isn’t quite enough.

The perks of Minecraft maps include:

• Storyline – Map creators include entertaining and often surprisingly complex
plots in their custom maps.
• A pre-fab adventure-scape – If you've ever dreamed of building your own
Mayan temple or Roman catacombs in Minecraft, chances are someone has
already built one for you to explore. The available maps include everything from
Indiana Jones-style crypts to a water park complete with rides.
• Goals – The objectives of an adventure map can be discovery, escape,
exploration, boss fights—or simply survival!

Adventure Craft

AdventureCraft is a standalone mod for Minecraft. It is the platform most map creators use to make adventure maps, and is required to run downloaded adventure maps on your own system. The mod is compatible with the Minecraft full game release. It installs its own icon and runs like an independent game. Adventure Craft includes many special blocks and tools for map creators, including scripts that spawn mobs and trigger bosses, in-game sounds, music, and even cut-scene videos. Download it by clicking on the Adventurecraft link above.

Where to find maps

There is an entire section of the Minecraft forum devoted to maps. All are custom maps designed by players and free to download (though some map authors encourage donations). However, many of the Minecraft adventure maps available online or on the Forum were created for Beta versions of Minecraft and have not been tested with Minecraft 1.1 or the current version of Adventure Craft.

Some examples include:

"9 Best Minecraft Adventure Maps": a great collection of the staple adventures newcomers will be dying to play: a Mayan temple, an Egyptian tomb, and a Dungeons and Dragons-style "Tower of Ordeals."

The #1 ranked Zelda Adventure (Version 9.5), a 6-level complete mini-game inspired by the Zelda series. The map includes an interactive storyline and has garnered over 170,000 downloads.

The Redmurk Mystery, an impressive custom map that is famous for its incredible architecture—as well as its hidden secrets. As an MC Mines admin said, "I am sure what he has done was not by hand but if it WAS—wow, that's all I have to say."

Another forum favourite is the EscapeCraft Adventure Map with room after room of puzzles you have to solve to escape like finding clues and figuring out riddles. An in-depth knowledge of Minecraft elements such as redstone, and water are essential and the levels towards the end are really quite difficult! So I would recommend some prior adventure map experience before embarking on this one! Due to popular demand the author of this adventure map put out 2 sequels to this map, EscapeCraft 2 and EscapeCraft 3. There is an awesome texture pack that the author of this Adventure Map created specifically for use with these maps called the EscapeCraft Texture Pack. You can download it as well as some of our other favourite texture packs on our Minecraft Texture Pack Download page.

Drawbacks:

Minecraft adventure maps may seem counterintuitive because they circumvent the key concept of the game: the ability to break and place blocks and experience freeform building. When using Adventure Craft to run adventure maps, the player can’t break or place blocks or otherwise “edit” the world. Also, there may still be bugs and crashes when running mods or maps created for older versions of Minecraft.

However, adventure mods for Minecraft offer unlimited possibilities to create, share, and experience RPG-style adventures. They are, essentially, thousands of mini-games in one. While some players will quickly lose interest in creating yet another Doom spire or slaying their umpteenth Creeper, adventure maps ensure that Minecraft has something for everyone.